Friday, April 23, 2010

"Fierce Advocate"

As LGBT activists grow more desperate to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” before the midterm elections, a picture is emerging of a divided White House where President Barack Obama’s own words are sometimes odds with the message his administration is sending about repeal.

Early in the year, multiple sources say some administration officials counseled the president against acting on the military’s gay ban in 2010. Still, Obama included his intention to end the policy in his State of the Union address, saying, “This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law…”

Yet just days after the January 27 speech, White House officials convened a meeting on February 1 with LGBT advocates in which they said the policy would not be included in the president’s recommendations for this year's Department of Defense authorization bill, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the meeting.

“It was a definitive shut-down from [Jim] Messina,” said a source, who was present at the meeting and agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, referring to the White House deputy chief of staff. “He said it would not be going into the president’s Defense authorization budget proposal.” The news was a blow to activists since the Defense funding bill is the best legislative vehicle for including a measure to overturn the policy. “It almost seemed like the bar on the hurdle got raised two or three times higher,” said the source.

Later in the article it suggests that Messina used the "fighting 2 wars right now" bullshit as a reason for the delay, which just adds insult to injury. We're using a lot of soldiers, so we need less of them. Right.

I honestly don't understand the point of going out of your way to say one thing in the State of the Union, when you know you're going to be contradicting it privately a few days later.

It's 2010. News like this will get out eventually, and people (Obama, Messina and HRC) will just look even more foolish as a result.

Shame on the administration for not pushing this when they had the chance. I'm sure not repealing DADT will stop the Republicans from saying that the Democrats are gay or don't hate gays enough or something equally stupid.